


picasso baby

by rescuemechinboyandshowmethestars



Series: art is a lie (that enables us to tell the truth) [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: LOVE and FEELINGS, M/M, Teacher-Student Relationship, and enjolras being a fool, eponine being the hero we deserve, i made this for you please enjoy, lots of gratuitous dick jokes, references to art history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 05:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11410836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rescuemechinboyandshowmethestars/pseuds/rescuemechinboyandshowmethestars
Summary: “At least I don't dress like an art student from the 1960s who lives in London and only smokes clove cigarettes while trying to use respectability politics to counter every argument,” Enjolras snapped, invading Grantaire's personal space.“Like you have room to talk, you fucker. Your blazer makes you look like a reject from a Target men's catalogue printed only for heterosexuals.”“Take that back,” Enjolras gasped. “Nothing about me is designed for heterosexual consumption.”“No, and fuck you.”also known as the one where enjolras and grantaire apparently get off on bickering very fondly with each other.





	picasso baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enjolrass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolrass/gifts).



> look......you might be seeing the teacher-student tag and flinching but like...please don't fret, it's not creepy, everyone involved very enthusiastically consents and nothing untoward occurs... just read it, you might have fun. also, i don't get how formatting works on here and everything is indented weird? ignore it. title thanks to jay z and plot thanks to my harrowing spring semester of college this yr that involved a very challenging art history course. wish my prof had been enjolras. anyway thanks to valentine and jim and jasper for proof reading this seven million years ago and waiting patiently for me to post this, i would never get anything done without the three of you, seriously. this one, just like everything i write, is for you. love you long time. okay. go have fun, meet you at the bottom!

            Grantaire hadn’t ordered the book for his next class, but he wasn’t worried. Art History I, all the creative shit humans ever made from the beginning of time to the Middle Ages, first class of the semester. He’d wanted Art History II but the section had been full. Fucking bullshit, as far as he’d been concerned. Online class, no real seats to fill, so how the fuck was it full? He’d wormed his way into AH-I and resigned himself to showing up to an actual physical lecture. There wasn't even a professor teaching it. It was a student instructor, and their name was Enjolras. Just that. Dr. Enjolras. Nothing to help Grantaire distinguish if that was the person’s first or last name. Nothing to help him distinguish their gender, either. Enjolras had some pretty damning reviews on ratemyprofessor.com, including a scathing one that had involved phrases like “... _felt like i was being forced to bear witness to the copulation of pretentiousness and idealism that ultimately resulted in the ungainly child that is Enjolras…”_ and “ _...the singularly most overcomplicated course ive ever had the extreme displeasure of being forced 2 complete…”_

            Grantaire had never seen an student instructor, not even an SI with a PhD, being reviewed on a website for professors, and he had never seen an SI being reviewed with such vitriol, either. He had been duly horrified and tried to switch out. That late in the break, there hadn’t been any other classes empty. He was furious, and had told Eponine so. He was going to be stuck looking at the caves of Altamira on some dickshit’s slideshows while there would be people in the online class looking at Van Gogh from the comfort of their own dorms or apartments. Bull _shit_. Eponine had looked unimpressed and offered to have Montparnasse hack the university server. Grantaire had immediately downplayed the severity of the issue and assured her that it would not be necessary and that it would be good for him to get out of his apartment for things other than work and/or drinking. Eponine had looked truly unconvinced. Grantaire dropped the issue so she would not be suspicious of his blustering, and went to delete any suspicious files out of his school email in case she actually put ‘Parnasse onto the case and had him clear out the entirety of the online classes so that Grantaire could pick whatever slot his heart desired. He was not opposed to being able to pick whatever slot his heart desired, but that meant depriving other people of their spots, and he was not going to take part in that.

            Anyway, first day of class. Grantaire was expecting a syllabus dropped on his desk and then his ass kicked out of the lecture hall thirty minutes early. This was his third semester; he’d switched to being an art major in the second and was now trying to hastily gobble up the pre-reqs so he could move to more interesting classes. He was fully aware that he had an affinity for anything art-related, so he was not worried. Actually, not only was he not worried--he was feeling lazy. He took a long shower and finally breezed into the lecture hall at 11:54 AM. He’d forgotten that people got in _early_ on the first day. He was relegated to the second row from the front. Fucking Christ. He was more of a back row kind of guy, but the front row (or close to it) was a good place to plaster on his flattest expression and convey to the professor that he was a give-no-shits sort of fellow. There was a syllabus on his desk already. Printed on crisp white paper. Art History I. Dr. Enjolras, PhD. Speaking of the good doctor--where was the ambiguously gendered individual who was so filled with petty intellectual ostentations that they elicited immediate ire from all those who had been forced to take notes for their shitty lecture?

            His answer came quickly. Enjolras breezed in at 11:56 AM with a briefcase under one arm and a textbook in the other. Grantaire could only see the back of their curly blonde head and broad shoulders hidden under a gray suit jacket. He crossed his arms over his chest and reclined in his chair. This would be interesting. He’d never had a student instructor before, but Eponine said they usually toed the line between very strict and rule abiding or nervous and easy to please. Grantaire hoped that this particular student instructor was the latter.

            Enjolras turned around.

            Grantaire saw his face, dropped his arms from his chest, and straightened in his seat. He took his pencil case and notebook out from his backpack and put them on his desk. He blinked.

            Enjolras was exceedingly good-looking. His eyes were the color of sunlight filtering through a bottle of whiskey and Grantaire was experiencing shortness of breath. Enjolras had the studious, sharp-edged look about him that most people with doctorates did not have. In Grantaire’s experience, doctorates made the instructors holier-than-thou, and that level of superiority made them complacent and stuffy. Grantaire did not fuck with holier-than-thou and he had a few Bs in his transcript to show for it. Enjolras, though? Not holier-than-thou. Just fully aware he was very skilled and had many things to offer. He did not carry himself like this job was sinecurial to him. He did not look like he thought teaching a bunch of plebes uneducated in the world of art was beneath him. Instead, he looked very focused, like the most important thing he had to do that day was beat some knowledge into their heads and he would not relent until that was finished. Grantaire vibrated in his seat at the thought of an entire sixteen weeks spent staring at that warm brown face.

            Enjolras cleared his throat. Grantaire chanced a look at the time. 11:57 AM. Enjolras _did_ seem like the type to start before class had technically begun. Grantaire put his syllabus on top of his notebook and popped his jaw.

            “Hello,” Enjolras said. His voice was clear and strong, but he was a little younger than Grantaire thought he would be, and the pitch of his tone conveyed that. “Welcome to Art History I. Uh, have any of you ever taken an Art History course before?”

            Silence. Grantaire would have been a little put-off at that had he been the instructor. Enjolras just rolled his shoulders a little and offered the room a smile so winning that Grantaire was sure its brilliance would be evident even if he was crammed all the way in the back row.

            “Oh, come on,” Enjolras said. The sparkle in his eyes didn’t dim, not really, but he looked a little bit annoyed. The sparkle mutated into something a little more disgruntled. Grantaire inhaled shakily. “I know _some_ of you can talk.”

            Silence. Grantaire would’ve thrown the guy a bone but Enjolras’s cheekbones were so outrageously alluring that Grantaire was sure he would sound dizzy when he spoke.

            “Well,” said Enjolras, looking unfazed, smile still hanging on his lips. Grantaire admired his pluck. “I’ll call roll, then, since I don’t want to be the asshole who forces anyone to speak,”

            There was a slight murmuring chuckle that started from Grantaire and rippled its way around the room. Enjolras brushed an errant curl out of his eye and twirled a pencil between his long fingers.

            “Can someone help me out?”

            Unthinkingly, Grantaire let his hand drift up from where it laid on the desk. Enjolras turned the full force of his corruscating smile on Grantaire and held out the marker.

            “What’s your name?”

            “Grantaire,” he squeaked, and fuck, he _did_ sound dizzy. He cleared his throat. “Grantaire.”

            “Welcome to Art History I, Grantaire. Mind checking off roll for me? I have a list of icebreaker questions I want to ask, and I’m awful at multitasking.”

            Grantaire rose unsteadily to his feet, tripped out of his row and stumbled down to Enjolras’s desk. He took the pencil from Enjolras. Their fingers brushed and Grantaire swore he could feel every loop of Enjolras's fingerprints burning white hot on the back of his hand.

            “Go ahead and mark yourself off,” He was bent over, digging through his briefcase. Grantaire resolutely didn't look at his ass and he checked the box next to his own name.

            “Done,” Grantaire said crisply, trying not to think about how big the lecture hall was and how small he felt when forced to stand in front of everyone.

            “Great,” Enjolras said. “Anyway,”

            He started asking questions, and Grantaire was off the hook at last, free to memorize the line of Enjolras’s jaw and bask in the gentle timbre of his laugh. Enjolras had a curl right at the front of his head that kept falling into his eyes. Every time, he’d brush it away impatiently, and it’d fall back a second later. Grantaire gripped the pencil like it was a life raft and tried to take deep breaths through his nose.

            Finally, they reached the last person on the list. Enjolras smiled and said, “Thank you, Grantaire. You can sit down.”

            If Enjolras said his name one more time, he was going to die. He really, truly was going to die.

            Grantaire made his way back to his seat and threw himself in the general direction of his chair, his knees too wobbly to bend fully. Enjolras turned and pointed to the board.

            “So. Art. Obviously, we all have very different definitions of the word, but we can really trace it back to…”

            Grantaire stopped paying attention, allowing his hand to track across the page, producing both absent doodles in the margins and semi coherent notes towards the center of the paper. He couldn’t believe it. He could not fucking believe his luck. The teacher of his favorite subject was hot as hell _and_ stupidly fucking smart to boot? Unbefuckinglievable.

-o-

            Grantaire and Enjolras did not get along well. Enjolras, who had presented a very friendly and exuberant facade on the first day of class, was a liar. He was not friendly or exuberant. He was so passionate about art history that having a conversation with him felt like being consumed by a wildfire. He had an opinion on everything. Grantaire, who up until now had been a relatively casual appreciator of art, found that the fire within Enjolras ignited something within himself. And it wasn’t in a good way.

            There wasn’t a single class that they didn’t fight in.

            It had a lot to do with the contentious emails that they’d been sending back and forth since the beginning of the semester. It wasn’t really Grantaire’s fault. Art History was a very important subject, and the fact that a pretentious ass jacket like Enjolras thought he could walk all over Grantaire was absolutely fucking ridiculous. It all started with Grantaire being a little overconfident about his own knowledge. He threw the first stone, so to speak, but god _damn_ did Enjolras keep throwing right back.

Grantaire moved to the front row and flung so many art related ripostes at Enjolras that Enjolras instituted a hand-raising policy and refused to call on Grantaire. This did not deter Grantaire. He compiled his complaints with Enjolras’s opinions throughout his lectures and forced him to stay ten minutes after every class parrying Grantaire’s grievances.

            Their conversations mostly went something like this:

            GRANTAIRE: “I just think that it’s funny how you insist we answer questions in class, but you always act like we’re wrong.”

            ENJOLRAS: [sighing] “You’re supposed to come to me with _specific_ questions after class, Grantaire.”

            GRANTAIRE: [frowning] “Okay, I have a specific question.”

            ENJOLRAS: “Yes?”

            GRANTAIRE: “You’re a bad instructor. Why?”

            ENJOLRAS: “...Care to elaborate on that?”

            GRANTAIRE: “Yeah, since you asked--”

            Eponine put her two cents in: she thought that Grantaire was picking fights with Enjolras just to have an excuse to talk to him. Grantaire vehemently denied that, although no jury would convict him if that _was_ the root of the issue. Enjolras’s good looks were amplified by about ten times when he was pissed off. Grantaire insisted that Eponine would understand everything if she saw Enjolras yell at him just _once_. Eponine said she refused to be involved in Grantaire’s kinky academia bullshit and told him to fuck off. Grantaire said that was fair, but that he was going to stand his ground. Eponine said she was going to order him a dildo shaped like the Laussel woman. Grantaire flipped her off and went back to adding to his list of grievances.

-o-

            Two months into the semester, things escalated from “not getting along well” to “all out conversational guerrilla warfare arguments in public places”. Grantaire decided that he fucking hated Enjolras. He was bad. Disgusting. Terrible. Uneducated. Talking out of his ass. The worst. Fucking horrible. As ratemyprofessor had said, his lectures were truly a one man show about being pretentious that served as a cautionary tale about drifting too deep into the world of scholarly articles and thinking you were hot shit. Grantaire swore he could hear a Greek chorus bemoaning the facade of grandiloquence that Enjolras had plastered on to disguise what Grantaire could only assume was an inexperienced homunculus of a student instructor born from dung heaps kept in the stables of the ivory towers of classist academics. And on top of all that, the asshole had assigned _two_ research papers. That was fucking absurd. Unfuckingprecedented. It was a low level class. There should not be two papers. There shouldn’t even be _one_. Other instructors contented themselves with mere quizzes and tests, but not Enjolras. Grantaire was furious. He was going to kill Enjolras, and then kill himself, and then resurrect both of them just so he could sock Enjolras right in the jaw. He explained all of this to Eponine in a diatribe so vicious that not even Truth emerging from her well to shame the sinners could match it.

            “But you like him,” Eponine said, clearly amused.

            Grantaire frowned and crossed his arms. They were having breakfast together in Montparnasse’s apartment, simply because it was closest to campus, and not because Montparnasse had any suitable food. His kitchen was a desolate wasteland of whiskey bottles, takeout boxes, and cigarette stubs, held together by several health code violations and sheer desperation. Grantaire had brought croissants and Eponine came bearing coffee and a sealed Tupperware of haphazardly made vegan egg substitute to pile on the croissants, and they were doing their best to have a small picnic while Montparnasse dozed on the couch. Grantaire had seen at least three cockroaches and was now trying to chew his food as quickly as possible so he could make his excuses to leave.

            “I don’t,” Grantaire said primly. “I hate him.”

            Eponine reached out and demolished half of his croissant with one bite. She put it back on his plate and wiped the vaguely yellow egg mix off of her cheek. Around her mouthful, she said, “Right.”

            “Okay, so I don’t _totally_ hate him, but, like,” Grantaire began. He took a sip of his coffee. “I’m an art major, and I don’t think he takes the subject that is the crux of my major seriously enough. I’m a complicated person with feelings. I am allowed to be a little pissed.”

            “But you still want to fuck him.”

            “I mean, yeah. Duh.”

            Montparnasse stuck his head up from the couch. “Who’s getting fucked?”

            “Parnasse,” Eponine said. “Go the fuck to sleep.”

            Montparnasse lowered his head. He raised it again, eyed Grantaire, and said, “If we’re talking about Grantaire’s sex life, I’d guess he’s a switch. He’ll probably top to get rid of all the pent up sexual frustration, but it’s probably anyone’s guess after that.”

            “We’ve discussed this,” Eponine said. “You’re not supposed to speculate about my friends’ sexual proclivities in front of them anymore.”

            “Grantaire is my friend, too!”

            Grantaire helped himself to a large gulp of coffee so that he wouldn’t say anything disparaging.

            “Yes, but we put a moratorium on the speculation after what you said about Marius,” Eponine said patiently.

            Montparnasse made a disgruntled noise. Grantaire’s eyes lit up. “He’s totally a bottom, right? But with a weird power streak?” Grantaire asked.

            Montparnasse beamed. “Exactly! That’s what I said!”

            “You said it _in front of him_ ,” Eponine said, slightly less patiently. “It’s _creepy_.”

            “Yes, but I also said that he has a public humiliation kink, and he blushed, so he probably enjoyed it.”

            “You cannot--listen, okay, it’s weird! Don’t make it weird.”

            Montparnasse made a face at Grantaire and sank back down into the couch cushions.

            “ _Anyway_ ,” Eponine said, with a very pointed look aimed in the direction of the couch. “You obviously like him,” she continued. She picked another piece of fake egg off of his plate. Grantaire, unsubtly, attempted to slide it closer to her. “Yeah, sure, you’ve said he doesn’t understand jackshit about contextual evidence, but you’ve also included several descriptions of his eyes that, apparently, sparkle like ‘freshly polished tiger’s eye gemstones’.”

            Grantaire sputtered. “No, I have not. I don’t recall saying anything like that. Okay? I truly don’t--I do not--I--you know what? Fuck you. Fuck you, okay, because you’re siding with him--”

            Eponine lifted his croissant off of his plate again and put the remainder of it into her mouth. Chewing slowly, she leveled an exceedingly derisive glare at him. Grantaire was sure if she kept staring that he’d melt into a Grantaire-shaped puddle of disgrace, and seep through the floorboards, straight into the ground, never to be seen again.

            “I’m not siding with anyone,” Eponine says. “I just think that it’s funny,” Here she paused, so that Grantaire could infer that she did _not_ think it was funny. “That you claim to hate the guy so damn much, but you’ve been to his office hours every week religiously. And all you do is talk about him and analyze the ‘graceful column’ of his neck and you said that--”

            “Excuse me,” Grantaire interrupted. “Ex _cuse_ me, Mademoiselle Thenardier, ob-fucking-jection--”

            “Overruled,” Montparnasse interjected from the couch.

            “Oh, shut _up_ ,” Grantaire snapped. “This is homophobia. That’s what it is. You’re just assuming that--”

            Eponine crossed her arms and very slowly raised her left eyebrow. There was more scorn in that simple motion than the greatest polemicist in the world’s history could ever muster. “Grantaire,” Eponine said. “Just because you’re the gay _est_ \--not the only gay, mind you, just the _most_ gay, and I say that because you’ve gone into such detail about Enjolras’s face that I could identify the fucker from the ‘delicate constellation of freckles that spell out the most interesting--”

            “Oh my God,” Grantaire said. “I did not say that.”

            “He has forty-five freckles on his cheeks,” Montparnasse said. “And a birthmark on his neck. It’s shaped like a fish. I don't want to know how you got close enough to see his freckles.”

            Grantaire put his head in his hands. “I didn’t say that. Please tell me I didn’t say that.”

            “You said that,” said Montparnasse, his voice muffled by the cushions of the couch. He pushed himself up on his hands and hung himself over the back of the couch. “And you sent me a text about how you thought the fish might be related to his star sign. I literally stopped using the burner phone you were messaging me on, but you kept texting.”

            “I hate myself,” Grantaire said mildly.

            “That makes two of us,” Montparnasse said, equally as mildly.

            “Your accusations about the office hours are baseless, though, Ep. I think that I should be celebrated--venerated, even--for my extreme dedication to scholastic excellence.”

            “Scholas-dick excellence,” Eponine said, and smiled.

            “I do not--I just want to make it very clear, okay, I have never sucked Enjolras’s dick.”

            “Has he sucked yours?”

            “Montpar _nasse_!” Grantaire shrieked. “Good God, man, will you go to _sleep_?!”

            Montparnasse snickered.

            “Okay, well, it's obvious that you like him, so,” Eponine took a sip of her coffee. “If you want to live in denial, that's your prerogative, man. But I think I speak for both of us--” She gestured to Montparnasse, who nodded hastily. “When I say that you'd both be happier if one of you got a good dicking and the other provided it.”

            “He’s old,” Grantaire said. “I don’t like him, he’s old, and--”

            “You’re twenty-four,” Eponine said. “He’s probably not more than thirty. Just ‘cause you got a late start in school--”

            “Because I’m garbage--”

            “Because you were saving up,” Eponine said.

            “Because I was an alcoholic,”

            “Because you made some mistakes. Growing pains, and all. Go have sex, okay?”

“I have to go,” Grantaire announced, averting his eyes. “I’m late.”

            “What, pray tell, are you late for?”

            Grantaire mumbled incomprehensibly as he scrambled up from his seat.

            “Couldn’t hear ya,” Eponine said. She leaned back in her chair and gave him a Look. Grantaire withered beneath her stare.

            “...Office hours,” Grantaire said. She was too polite to look triumphant.

            “I’ll walk you out, R. I should be on my way, anyway.” Eponine rose and grabbed her bag off of the hook by the door. (There were hooks everywhere in Montparnasse’s apartment. Everything had to be hung up so that bugs couldn’t get into anything on the floor. Grantaire was fully aware of the fact that Montparnasse had enough money from his dubious dealings to move into a much nicer place. In fact, he and Eponine had offered Montparnasse their spare bedroom. However, the man had a strange attachment to his rat-and-roach infested hideyhole, and they were thus forced to make frequent visits to avoid wounding his pride.)

            “Love you,” Montparnasse called, as the door swung shut.

            Eponine and Grantaire chorused in unison, “You, too!”

            Montparnasse was, in spite of his disgusting apartment and horrible habits, a very good friend. Grantaire considered himself supremely lucky to know him.

            “Ah, yes,” Grantaire said, delighted now that he had found a place to strike. “Tell me, dearest, how's Monsieur Marius?”

            “I don't want to discuss him,” Eponine said, with thinly veiled disgust.

            “Please, Eponine, I have to know more of your epic love story,” Grantaire simpered, edging closer. Eponine stomped on his foot and elbowed her way to the door.

            “If you must know,” Eponine said, flinging the door open and scuttling into the hall. “He has a girlfriend now, and she's beautiful. _I_ might be in love with her. She’s Korean and she has a very natural looking balayage in her hair. She's killing me slowly.”

            “In love with the master _and_ the maiden!” Grantaire crowed.

            Eponine shot him a venomous glare and started trudging down the hall towards the stairs. There was an elevator, but it was so rusty and creaked so vigorously that Grantaire hadn't even dared to breathe near it for a year.

            “I don't want to talk to you ever again,” Eponine said. “You’re gross. Did you know that?”

            “Please,” Grantaire said pompously, pressing a hand to his heart at the imagined slight. “It doesn't suit you to lie.”

            “Everything suits me,” Eponine said. “I’m very fucking suitable. Now fuck off and go suck the good doctor's dick.”

            “He’s not a medical doctor! It’s a PhD, for your--”

            “I _know_!” she replied, fiddling with the staircase door. “You’ve _said_!”

            “Am I that annoying?”

            “Even more than you could ever know.”

            “I love you, too,” Grantaire said.

            “Oh, wait,” Eponine said, a smile blooming on her brown face. “PhDick.”

            Grantaire did not dignify that with a response. Instead, he said, “By the way, do you want me to make a group chat so you can propose a threesome to--”

            Eponine stepped on his foot again and fled down the stairs with a clatter. Grantaire, his toes aching inside his boots, drifted downstairs after her with a smile on his face.

-o-

            “Cosette,” Enjolras repeated. “You don't understand. I'm going to die.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Cosette said. “Now, do you agree with my thesis statement?”

            “This is against the rules,” he said halfheartedly. “I’m not supposed to help you write any papers for professors in my department.”

            “You’re not technically a professor,” Cosette said. “You’re a student instructor. Even if you do have a doctorate. Shut up and edit it.”

            “I thought we were meeting so I could complain about _my_ problem.”

            They were in The Cafe Musain near the faculty building, getting coffee before Enjolras's next appointment with a very troublesome student. Cosette’s boyfriend, Marius, was in Enjolras's lecture, and Cosette had taken a class with him last semester (Advanced Law Theory, even though she was only a freshman), and they had the wary alliance that only a sort of teacher and a student could have. She was currently in the process of stealing his test review from him for Marius and demanding that he proofread her paper for the Art History II lecture she was in with Myriel down the hall. He was only halfway doing both of those things, mostly because both of those things were against the rules, but also because he was thinking about Grantaire.

            “Nobody said we were doing that,” Cosette said. She smacked the red pen more forcefully on top of his copy of the paper. “Edit this, goddammit!”

            He grumbled and made a haphazard mark around a sentence she should take out. “This is so wrong.”

            “What? What'd I do?!”

            “No,” Enjolras said patiently. “Your paper is very good. In fact, I'm not convinced that you have anything whatsoever to worry about. I just meant that I'm _not_ supposed to be looking at this paper _or_ hinting at what might be on the test review.”

            Cosette fluttered her eyelashes at him.

            “This is a huge Willen-don’t,” he said innocently, scrawling a note in the margin of the second page.

            “A Willen--you fucker!” Cosette seized the pen from him and started scribbling.

            “I can't believe I'm being this lax...caux...with my standards,” Enjolras continued. She wrote _Lascaux_ on the paper. He didn't nod because that would mean that he was consciously encouraging cheating but he blinked in what he thought was an encouraging manner. “I mean, it's a mistake of _mammoth_ proportions.”

            Cosette rolled her eyes. “You’re terrible at this.”

            “Well, I can't just _hand_ you the answers, can I?”

            “You could,” Cosette said. “You totally could.”

            “I don't hand the answers over without sexual favors being exchanged,” Enjolras said. He meant it as a joke, but Cosette got an extremely concerning twinkle in her eyes. “I was not being serious, Cosette.”

            “Right,” she said. “Okay.”

            “Cosette--”

            “A _joke_ ,” she said, and winked.

            “If Marius is willing to suck dick for an A, then maybe he should just transfer to an easier class.”

            “No,” Cosette said. “Just to be clear, we're _both_ willing to suck dick. Both of us. Sequentially, at the same time, staggered over an entire evening, or--”

            “At the same time?” Enjolras said. “How on Earth does that work?”

            “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cosette winked.

            “Cosette, I just want to let you know that propositioning me is mostly illegal.”

            “I was not propositioning you,” Cosette said calmly. “I was just clarifying, in case you were confused. Or interested.”

            “I’m not,” Enjolras said, for the sake of propriety.

            “The offer stands for as long as either of us are in one of your classes,” Cosette shrugged.

            “Does Marius know you’re offering his body up as a sacrifice for your education?”

            “Marius lets me do whatever I want with or to his body,” Cosette said peaceably. Enjolras choked on his coffee and spat it back into his cup. “And anyway, I know you're only saying no because you like that kid in your Art History lecture. Not Marius. The other one. Graintemp? Groantenor?”

            “Gran _taire_ ,” Enjolras said. “And no, I'm saying no because I'm not a predator.”

            “Same diff,” Cosette said dismissively.

            “How eloquent,” Enjolras said, taking a delicate sip of his coffee.

            “He’s the one you're meeting after this?”

            “Yes,” Enjolras replied. “He keeps stumbling into my office claiming he's confused about things, even though his papers might as well have been written by John Updike.”

            Cosette snorted. “He sounds familiar. Maybe Marius knows him? What's he look like?”

            “Godly,” Enjolras said truthfully. “Brown, curly hair, lips so perfectly formed and pink that Renoir should've painted him--”

            “Blowjob lips,” Cosette offered helpfully.

            Enjolras did not encourage her, but he pointedly didn't correct her. She took a gleeful sip of her coffee and motioned for him to continue.

            “He’s devastatingly smart, frighteningly handsome--”

            “This guy?” Cosette asked, holding up her phone. Enjolras yelped and dropped his biscotti.

            “Yes! That's him. What the fuck? Where did you find that?”

            “I just went through Marius's tagged photos. He hangs out with this girl Eponine--who is _so_ hot, by the way. She's truly making me believe in the power of bisexuality. Truly. Like--”

            “Cosette.”

            “Yeah. Sorry. Anyway, Eponine is Gradetempura’s roommate.”

            “It’s _Grantaire._ ”

            “Right. Graham cracker. That's him. He _is_ cute.”

            “Yeah, well,” Enjolras said bitterly. “Nothing is gonna come of it.”

            “Kiddo,” Cosette said understandingly. “Suck his dick.”

            “I would never have guessed that a wanton smut peddler lurked behind your soft and childish face.”

            “Nobody ever does,” Cosette said grimly. “You’re on the way to an appointment with him right now, yes?”

            “I will not be sucking his dick.”

            “Enjolras,” she said. “You’re a student instructor. It's not against the law for you to have a crush. Live a little.”

            “I hate living,” Enjolras said.

            Cosette turned her phone screen around again so that Enjolras could see Grantaire's Instagram bio. _On se casse le cou à vivre. You break your neck to live._ “Sounds like you have plenty in common, then.”

            Enjolras groaned. “I have to go. I'm gonna be late.”

            “Take my advice. Live a little!”

            “I’d rather die,” Enjolras said, and shut the cafe door behind him.

            -o-

            “What the fuck,” Grantaire said.

            “Yes, well,” Enjolras said. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, per se--”

            “This is a 89.9%,” Grantaire said sharply. Enjolras blinked. “I’m missing 0.01%. Where is it?”

            “Your test scores--”

            “Where is the 0.01%?”

            Grantaire had never been so pissed off in his entire life. Generally, he was not a very dedicated student, worker, or romantic partner. However, he’d recently raised his academic standards so he could keep his scholarship, which meant maintaining a 3.8 GPA or above. A 89.9% was good, but it did not supply the natural high that came with receiving an A in a course. Furthermore, he needed an A in _this_ course, to show Enjolras that it was possible to appreciate and analyze art efficiently without having a fancy degree, because fuck this guy.

            “Well, that’s what I wanted to discuss. I offer an extra credit assignment that’s worth up to ten points, so you could--”

            “Oh, fuck me. You’re not going to just bump me up? Not even a little?”

            Enjolras glared at him. “Can I finish?”

            “Fine.”

            “It’s worth up to ten points, depending on how well you do. You have to pick an artifact and reconstruct it yourself using only the materials available at the time. Document it in pictures, and then write a two to three page paper analyzing it.”

            “Fuck me,” Grantaire repeated despondently. Enjolras sighed.

            “This is a very good opportunity, Gra--”

            “Oh my God,” Grantaire said, freezing. An idea, a wonderful, _incredibly_ inappropriate idea appeared in his head. “Oh my--it can be _any_ artifact from any time period we covered in this course?”

            “Uh...yes? I mean, please choose something doable, because--”

            “A Greek one,” Grantaire interrupted. “Could it be a Greek one? An ancient Greek one?”

            “Of course. Just--”

            “I have to go,” Grantaire said, seizing his backpack off of the floor. “I have to go right now.”

            “Okay,” Enjolras replied, bewildered. “That’s fine. If you have any questions, you can email me. And there’s no due date, okay, just as long as you can get it in by the end of the--”

            “Thank you!” Grantaire yelled. He slammed the door on his way out, leaving Enjolras at his desk, immensely confused.

-o-

            “Tell me again why you need this much clay,” Eponine said, heaving the last box onto the table.

            “Tell me again why I had to pay for this much clay,” Montparnasse said.

            Grantaire had hastily converted the spare bedroom into a haphazard studio. That is to say, he’d thrown several borrowed drop cloths around the room, put a collapsible table that he’d snatched from a thrift store dumpster in the middle of everything, and started calling it a studio.

            “I need this much clay because my sculpture is going to be at least a foot tall,” Grantaire said. “And because it takes a lot of clay to construct accurate genitalia.”

            “Wait,” Eponine said.

            “What,” Montparnasse said.

            “Just put the clay down,” Grantaire said. “I’ll pay you back, Montparnasse.”

            “No, you won’t.”

            “No, I won’t, but I think I should be applauded for even considering the notion.”

            “Kudos,” Montparnasse said. “I’m gonna go, then. I don’t want to be around for Grantaire making dicks out of fancy Play-Doh.”

            “Why are you assuming it’s a dick,” Grantaire mumbled, already busy digging through the clay.

            “I assumed you were making a foot tall dildo for your professor,” Montparnasse said.

            “Student instructor,” Eponine and Grantaire chorused. Montparnasse frowned.

            “If you say professor, it gives him power,” Grantaire explained.

            “...Yeah, okay,” Montparnasse said.

            “Anyway, I wanted marble for this, but--”

            “You’re poor,” Montparnasse said. “And I’m not buying you the materials for a marble dildo.”

            “I’m not making a dildo, for Christ’s sake,” Grantaire said. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to say that more than once in one day.”

            “You’re lucky I sprung for _clay_ dildo material,” Montparnasse continued.

            “It’s! Not! A! Dildo!”

            “What is it, then?”

            “It’ll be way funnier if you don’t find out what it is until it’s done,” Grantaire said. “Hand me that clay.”

            Montparnasse hefted a bag of clay and slapped it down in front of Grantaire.

            “No, _that_ clay.”

“It’s all the same, you fucker,” Eponine said, staring at the enormous pile of gray clay.

“Well, I want _that_ one.”

 Montparnasse ripped open the bag of clay, balled up a piece, and threw it at Grantaire’s forehead.

“Okay. Point taken.”

“ _Now_ will you admit you like him?” Eponine said, blatantly accusatory, her arms crossed over her chest.

Grantaire heaved a cacophonous sigh that was more commensurate with suffering through a minor stab wound than it was with admitting emotions. “Yes,” he said. “I, Grantaire, would like Enjolras to--”

“No,” Montparnasse interrupted. “I didn’t sign up to hear any sexual confessions.”

“To--”

“I’m going to take the clay back if you don’t shut your ass up.”

 Grantaire mimed zipping his lips and hurling the key up through the stratosphere and into space.

“We’ll leave you to it, man,” Montparnasse said, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, I would totally stay, but...Yeah, I don’t have an excuse. This is boring. See ya. Have fun.”

“He will,” Eponine answered. Grantaire’s hands were already buried in a lump of clay. “I’m gonna go print your reference pictures, okay?”

Grantaire didn’t answer. He was already lost in his work.

-o-

“Grantaire,” Eponine said.

Silence.

“Grantaire,” Eponine repeated.

Silence.

She grabbed his Art History textbook off of the floor and smacked his shoulder with it. He jumped.

“Jesus, what the fuck? Just take my whole arm off next time, why don’t you!” Grantaire snapped, rubbing at his shoulder. He pulled his earbuds out and squinted up at Eponine, who withheld all of her comments.

“I’m going out,” she said. “And you need to come, too. You haven’t eaten since...well, you haven’t eaten.”

“My project isn’t finished,” Grantaire said.

“It’s not due till the end of the semester,” Eponine said, with her best no-excuses-young-man voice. She glanced at the clay. It was currently shaping up to be a very large, very plain looking gray block. It was not yet a foot tall but seemed to be nearing on it. Ordinarily, she would have withheld all of her comments, but in this instance, she had none. It was a block. What the fuck are you supposed to say about a block? You’re supposed to _start_ with a block, not finish with it. She knew he wasn’t finished, obviously, but he seemed to be near enough to the finish that a block was not a justifiable nearly-finished product. “Leave it and come with me.”

“It’s gonna dry weird,” he protested.

Eponine blinked at him and drew her lips back from her teeth in a way that accurately conveyed her disappointment and annoyance.

“Fine,” Grantaire said, suddenly aware both of her eyes on him and the emptiness of his stomach. “Where are you going?”

“Back to one of Marius’s social justice club meetings,” she said.

“I thought you said you were gonna stop going to those,” he said absently. He smoothed over a seam on the side of the block. Eponine watched his thumb stroke over the clay with interest.

“I did, but.”

“But?” Grantaire asked, glancing up. Whatever he saw in her face must have interested him, because he blinked away the haze from his eyes and kept staring.

“Cosette asked me to come,” Eponine said sheepishly. Grantaire crowed with laughter.

“Now this, I’ve got to see,” Grantaire said. “When do we leave?”

-o-

The Cafe Musain was almost unbearably quaint. It glowed with soft golden lights from the inside, its front window stretching out big and broad enough to display its scant handful of cheerful inhabitants who were all seated in booths with red vinyl seats or at tables with wooden chairs carved in anachronistically ornate styles. Grantaire felt an uncomfortable pulse of anxiety upon entering, like a preschooler leaving his mother’s presence for the first time. Luckily, that swell of panicked emotion immediately began to dissipate upon seeing Marius, who was unceasingly friendly and not unlike an excitable puppy. Grantaire was relieved by the prospect of having another person to latch onto besides Eponine. Marius spotted Eponine, and then Grantaire, who was lurking nervously behind Eponine like the specter of Death come to claim another soul, and he jumped up to greet them. A very beautiful girl with a very natural balayage in her hair (like Eponine had said) was perched on his lap and made the jumping up very difficult. Marius carefully displaced her and _then_ jumped up. He came scurrying over and smiled brightly.

“Eponine! You came!”

“So I did,” Eponine said. She was obviously trying to maintain her composure but it wasn’t working. Her right eye was developing a twitch.

Grantaire interceded on her behalf. “Hi,” he said.

Marius turned to him hastily, said, “Grantaire!”, and then threw his arms around Grantaire. Grantaire, with his nose mashed into Marius’s shoulder, half-heartedly tried to free himself from the straitjacket of Marius’s arms that made it impossible to reciprocate the hug in any way at all.

“Hey, man,” Grantaire said. “How have you been?”

Marius was still hugging Grantaire, but Grantaire was pretty sure Marius was wearing his ever-present brilliant smile on his face. “I’m doing well, my dude! I’m so glad you came!”

“I can tell,” Grantaire said. His ribs were aching a little. Marius exclusively gave the kind of hugs that a wife would give her husband when he disembarked from a steamer ship after the end of World War II.

“Come in! Have a seat! Do you want coffee? Anything?” Marius asked, disentangling himself from Grantaire.

“Grantaire needs, like, a metric fuckload of protein,” Eponine said. “He hasn’t eaten in a half-century.”

“There’s fries,” Marius offered.

“Counteroffer accepted,” Grantaire said.

-o-

Grantaire kind of regretted coming. It wasn’t a _bad_ meeting, per se. He couldn’t tell what the fuck was going on, of course, but everyone seemed to be in good cheer that was infectious in its brilliance, and that made it nice. Unfortunately, he didn’t know any of these people very well (besides Eponine, and Eponine was currently seated in Cosette’s lap and had not left for half an hour), and he could only think of his clay drying at home. (And his absurdly beautiful instructor.)

He was sitting in a booth that had, up until mere moments ago, held Eponine, Marius, and Cosette. It was now empty, and Grantaire took a melancholy sip of his coffee and a morose bite of his fries and tried to envision what he was going to do next with the clay.

“Grantaire!” said a voice.

“Tis I,” Grantaire said, raising his head from his coffee. It was a girl he’d met earlier but couldn’t remember the name of--Marisol, maybe, or Manchaca? He couldn’t recall. She was with two men, one of whom was dark skinned and tall, and the other of whom was average height and tan. The tall one had a truly impressive fade and the shorter one had a cane. Grantaire could not remember their names either, but was cataloging these details just in case he ever saw them on the street and needed to say hello later on.

“Musichetta,” she said, pointing to herself. “Bossuet,” That was the tall one. “Joly.” That was the shorter.

“Grantaire,” he said, pointing to himself with a smile. “What’s up?”

“Can we sit?” she asked. He nodded.

“Dibs on the end seat,” Joly said hastily, and immediately made a dash for the inner corner of the booth.

“Fuck you,” Bossuet said cheerfully. “After you, ‘Chetta.”

Musichetta sat in the middle and Bossuet positioned himself on the end. There was a moment of fitful silence in which Grantaire could feel all of them, himself included, scrabbling in the dirt for prospective topics. The small talk burst forth all at once, water smashing straight through a dam.

“So, have you been here before?”

“How long have you known Eponine?”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Musichetta, were you in my biology class?”

They all laughed, the tension broken.

“Who was your professor?” Musichetta asked, propping her chin on her hands.

“Javert,” Grantaire said, with no small portion of disgust.

Javert deserved every bit of the disgust. He was a professor in the science department, and although he taught the most basic biology class, he derived immense pleasure from making it as complicated as possible. Almost every student that passed through his doors typically emerged with a B and a lingering sense of crushing sadness that took at _least_ a semester to dissipate. Grantaire had received a ninety-three in the class, which he fought tooth and nail for. (He’d sent Montparnasse in to steal the test key for the final, but everything else was the result of his own hard work.) The ill effects of Javert’s miserable, ridiculously cruel reign of terror were only lessened by two things. They were as follows:

  1. He was never getting tenure.
  2. If he _did_ get tenure, it meant he’d be stuck under Valjean forever.



            Jean Valjean was Cosette’s foster father. He was a tenured professor, and the head of the science department. He taught everything from chemistry to zoology, and although most of his classes were difficult, he made all of them as easy as humanly possible. Almost every student that passed through his doors left clinging to an A, even if it was not well-deserved, with a smiles on their faces and a sense of goodwill and trust in humanity that lasted for at least one semester. It infuriated Javert to no end that Valjean refused to go harder on his students, and it amused Valjean to no end that there was nothing Javert could do about it. They fought almost constantly. Javert tried to trip Valjean up and reveal holes in his curriculum; Valjean ignored him, because you couldn’t find holes where there were none. Javert stole Valjean’s lunches from the faculty fridge; Valjean salted the coffee pot when Javert wasn’t looking. Once, Cosette did a Facebook livestream where she filmed Javert screaming at Valjean while Valjean marked all the research papers in his class with an A, an amused expression on his face. A little over two thousand people had tuned in. Their rivalry was, to date, the only thing that consistently brought a smile to Grantaire’s face.

“Oh, yeah! I totally remember that. Didn’t Javert make us dissect, like, fifteen frogs because we kept ‘doing it wrong’?” Musichetta asked.

Grantaire grimaced. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“That’s fair,” she said, amused. The curve of her smile was unbearably enchanting. She grabbed Joly’s mug and took a sip. “What other classes do you have this semester?”

“A couple boring ones. Comp II, ASL, the like.”

“That’s it?”

“Well,” Grantaire said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice. “I do have one _terrible_ class.”

“Do tell,” Bossuet interjected excitedly. Grantaire grinned.

“It’s Art History I,” he said. “And I have it with the worst student instructor.”

Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed the color draining from the trio’s faces.

“He is _such_ an asshole,” Grantaire continued, oblivious. “He doesn’t know anything, okay. _Nothing._ And he acts like we can really derive _any_ concrete meaning from cave paintings, and I disagree, okay, I fucking _disagree_. Culturally speaking, we have no idea under which the context those paintings were made, and to imply that we can make anything other than educated gue--”

If Grantaire had been looking anywhere other than directly into Joly’s eyes as he continued his depredatory monologue, he would have noticed somebody pushing his way into the cafe. Somebody with shiny golden hair and a tired expression that was easily recognizable.

“--Anyway, that’s why I think that the Ishtar Gate is--”

“Grantaire,” Musichetta said.

“I know I’m rambling, but I’m getting to a point, Mus--”

“Grantaire,” Bossuet repeated urgently.

“It’s just that the lamassu--”

“Grantaire,” Joly stammered.

“No, listen--”

“Hello, Grantaire,” Enjolras said.

Grantaire froze.

“I must say,” Enjolras said. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be doing the extra credit.”

Grantaire tried to swallow; he found that his throat was dry. He looked up. Enjolras stood over him, an indecipherable expression on his face. Enjolras, he noted, looked twice as mouthwatering as usual when he wasn’t in a suit. He’d clearly tried to disguise the sharply obvious fact of his almost uncomfortable beauty. It wasn’t working. He was wearing very tight jeans and a T-shirt that had _HARVEY MILK FOR PREZ_ printed across the front. God, what a revelation that was, Enjolras in a T-shirt, cotton stretched across pectorals that appeared to be surprisingly toned beneath the fabric. Until that moment, Grantaire had not thought he was at risk for asthma. However, he was suddenly having a difficult time breathing. He was frighteningly aware of his lungs and they were sending him warning signals.

“Excuse me,” Grantaire said hastily. Enjolras raised an eyebrow. “I--hello, yes, I--excuse me. I have to--they’re calling me. Excuse me.”

With no further explanation, he leapt from his seat and barrelled across the cafe, straight through the door, and out into the street, where he disappeared into the darkness instantly.

From her seat on Cosette’s lap, Eponine could only make out the back of Grantaire’s curly head as he sped further down the street.

“Was that...oh, fuck,” she said.

“I think that was your friend,” Marius offered helpfully.

“I can’t imagine why he’d leave so suddenly,” Eponine sighed. “Hang on, I’d better go see what this is about.” She stood up. Her new vantage point allowed her to see straight across the cafe to the booth in the corner, where a tall man with carefully arranged blonde curls and a birthmark shaped like a fish on his neck stood. She froze. “I have to go,” she said. “Sorry, I have to leave right now.”

“Eponine--” Cosette began.

“No, no,” Eponine said, grabbing her backpack. “You can--don’t worry, I just--yeah, I have to go.”

And with that, she followed Grantaire’s path, running as fast as she could out of the cafe,  leaving behind Marius with a very confused expression on his face and Cosette with a knowing one on hers.

-o-

“Did you _see_ him,” Enjolras said, crashing into the seat Grantaire had just vacated. Grantaire, stupid Grantaire, who had the top two buttons of his flannel popped open far enough to expose the dark skin of his clavicle, whose hair was tousled in an obscenely louche fashion, who was still unbearably attractive even when he was in the process of dragging Enjolras’s teaching skills within an inch of his life.

“ _I_ saw,” Joly said, and then, more meaningfully, “I _saw_.”

Musichetta and Bossuet eyed him. He raised an eyebrow and stood his ground.

“I want to die,” Enjolras said. “I seriously, I just--oh, God. And he hates me. You heard him! He _hates_ me!”

Musichetta snorted contemptuously, and then hid the noise in a cough when Enjolras glared at her.

“I don’t think he hates you,” Bossuet said haltingly, unsure how to handle the sheer amount of obliviousness presented before him.

“I think,” Joly said, and then fell silent. Enjolras assumed that this was because Joly recognized how right Enjolras was. Bossuet assumed it was because Joly knew how right _he_ was. In reality, it was because Joly was still in shock over how incredibly good looking Grantaire was, but didn't want to voice that for fear of retribution.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Bossuet repeated. “It took him less than a _minute_ to bring you up in conversation, Enjolras, he--he doesn’t hate you.”

“He,” Enjolras said. “Hates me.” He crossed his arms.

“Bro,” Bossuet said slowly, trying to collect himself. Two years of pre-law had sharpened his arguing skills considerably, and yet, he was still not prepared to match wits with Enjolras, and he knew it. Not because Enjolras was smarter than him, but because Enjolras went deaf to any criticism once he had formulated a conclusion. “I know being stubborn is your whole thing, but, like,”

“Being stubborn isn’t my whole thing!” Enjolras snapped.

Everybody in the cafe fell silent and turned their heads toward Enjolras.

“Being stubborn is my whole thing,” Enjolras corrected himself. One by one, everyone returned to their conversations. Buoyed up by the success of having pinpointed at least one good argument, Bossuet relaxed slightly in his seat. “But it’s not being stubborn if you’re right.”

“That’s--oh my God, it’s still being stubborn, you fuck-knuckle,” Bossuet huffed. Musichetta took her phone out and started clicking around, effectively communicating her intense disinterest in the topic at hand. Joly immediately looked the other way when Bossuet glanced at him, pleading for help. “Listen,” Bossuet said. “I’m begging you.”

“Cosette!” Enjolras called. On the other side of the room, Cosette stopped staring into Marius's eyes and looked up. “Does Grantaire hate me? He hates me, right?”

Cosette and Marius made the same pained expression at the same time. She whispered something to him and clambered out of her seat, trotting over to their table.

“Are we on this _again_?” Cosette said, barely suppressing her exhaustion.

“Of course,” Bossuet said. “We’re gonna be on this until they bone.”

“Bone,” Enjolras said faintly. “Bone? We’re not going to bone. Do you know why?”

“It’s not because he hates you!” Bossuet, Joly, Musichetta, and Cosette chorused at the same time that Enjolras said, “It’s because he hates me!”

“Hang on,” Enjolras said. “I’m getting Combeferre.”

“No!” Everyone at the table said in unison.

“No,” Bossuet repeated desperately. He was not emotionally prepared to handle Enjolras _and_ Combeferre, who were a deadly tag team when united over one cause. “If you get Combeferre, he’s just going to say you’re right.”

“I know,” Enjolras said. “Can you tap Combeferre? I don’t think he has his hearing aids on.” The last part was directed to Bahorel, who was making his way through a burger with single-minded dedication usually reserved for soldiers charging straight into the thick of battle.

“If you get Combeferre over here, I’m gonna dump your protein powder down the sink,” Bossuet said, turning to stare Bahorel down. “You better not.”

Bahorel froze with the burger halfway to his lips, his eyes flitting between Enjolras and Bossuet nervously. After a moment of deliberation, he turned his head and pretended not to hear. Enjolras, grumbling, got to his feet and stomped off towards the couch to rouse Combeferre, who had his head pillowed on Bahorel’s muscle-bound shoulder.

“I don't want to do this,” Cosette said. “I hate talking to him about this. Grantaire is like an inch away from falling to his feet and begging if he can--”

“He hates me,” Enjolras interrupted, returning with Combeferre on his arm. Combeferre was grimacing and fiddling with his hearing aids, ignoring Enjolras.

“ _I_ hate you,” Cosette said passionately.

“Seconded,” Musichetta said, without looking up from her phone.

“Heard that,” Combeferre said. “What are we talking about? Wait, doesn't matter. I hate Enjolras, too. Third-ed.”

“You love me,” Enjolras contradicted. Combeferre shoved Enjolras out of the way and stole his spot in the booth as an answer.

“Listen,” Enjolras said, throwing himself down beside Combeferre. “He hates me.”

“Listen,” Bossuet said. “He doesn't.”

Bossuet refused to outright say that Enjolras was wrong, because that usually led to further frustration for both parties. He bit his tongue and tried to take deep breaths through his nose.

“Musichetta, he hates me,” Enjolras said, turning towards the one person who was vaguely likely to tolerate his concern.

Musichetta glowered at him. “No comment. I don't do the pigtail pulling shit. In my opinion, all healthy and happy relationships are built on great communication, great sex, and a great sense of humor.”

“I provide all three,” Joly announced.

Musichetta rolled her eyes so far back into her head that everyone watching was afraid she might pass out. “ _Anyway_ ,” she said.

“My God,” Joly said, clapping a hand to his chest, mouth pulled down at the corners into a moue of distaste. “Are you saying I _don't_ provide great sex?”

“That’s, like, _exactly_ what she's saying,” Combeferre said.

“Did I ask,” Joly said petulantly.

“Yes,” Combeferre said. “You literally just did.”

“Did I?” Joly repeated, looking deeply offended. Combeferre groaned.

“Okay--mediocre sex, subpar communication, okay-ish takeout ordering skills,” Bossuet said. Combeferre hid a snicker behind his hand and smiled innocently at Joly when he made a cry of outrage. “Now be quiet, Joly, the grownups are talking.”

“Okay, first of all, you fuckweasel, I'm only six months younger than you,” Joly said, shoving his glasses further up on his nose. “Second of all, I do _not_ recall you complaining about this allegedly mediocre sex after I sucked your _soul_ out of your dick _just last night._ ”

Enjolras groaned. “Are any of you going to listen to me?

“Fuckweasel?” Cosette asked.

“All we _do_ is listen to you,” Combeferre returned. “That’s our fucking hobby. Meeting up and listening to you.”

“Okay, anyway, do you really think I'm bad at sex?” Joly said, still sounding shocked.

“Do I--Joly, now is not the time,” Bossuet said.

“Fuckweasel?” Cosette repeated.

“ _Not the time_!” Bossuet and Joly said in stereo.

Cosette pouted and turned her attention to shoving at Enjolras's shoulder. He shifted down a little, vinyl squeaking against his jeans. Cosette jammed herself into the booth and propped her her chin on her hands. “What do we have to do to get you to believe that Groundtire doesn't hate you?”

“It’s _Grantaire_ ,” Enjolras said wearily.

“Right,” Cosette said innocently. “Grunt-tore.”

“Put the dude's mouth on his dick,” Combeferre interjected helpfully, cutting off any further mutations of Grantaire’s name.

Cosette sighed. “I like the way you think, ‘Ferre, but we’re looking for workable, _consensual_ solutions here.”

“I’m, like, 99% sure that Grantaire would consent to anything Enjolras suggested,” Musichetta added. “Just sayin’.”

Sensing the conversation had gotten away from him, Bossuet closed his mouth and listened very attentively.

“He--”

“If you say he hates you _one_ more time,” Marius cut in. They all jumped. Over the din of Enjolras's complaining, it was impossible to hear anyone approaching. Marius crossed his arms and frowned at Enjolras disapprovingly.

“Stay in your lane, Marius,” Enjolras said.

“Bossuet, I gave you a rusty trombone once! How can you say I'm subpar at sex?” Joly cried.

“You _what_ ,” Cosette squealed, leaning across the table.

“It’s when you--” Joly said, and then fell silent when Musichetta turned her gaze on them.

“I _can't_ stay in my lane,” Marius objected, electing to ignore Joly. “You’re _yelling_.”

“I am not yelling!” Enjolras said, obviously yelling.

“You’re yelling,” Combeferre said dryly. “Even I can tell.”

“Can you please get your life together?” Musichetta added.

“Okay, you don't get to talk anymore,” Enjolras said, waving his arms to encompass the trio in front of him. “Musichetta, you have _two_ boyfriends. How can you give advice to me about getting _one?_ You've been out of the dating pool for too long to be relevant.”

“That disqualifies Cosette, too, then,” Musichetta pointed out. Cosette stuck out her tongue.

“It’s been, like, six months,” Cosette said. “I’m not disqualified.”

“Six months is a lifetime in the language of the heart,” Marius said sagely.

“Quiet, Marius,” Cosette said. Looking adorably despondent, Marius obediently closed his mouth and squeezed in next to Musichetta.

“No, let him speak,” Musichetta said. “Boy is smooth as hell. If anyone's getting you laid, it's Marius.”

Enjolras gazed doubtfully at Marius, who was currently wearing a shirt that said, “ _Seize the memes of production._ ”

“Actually, I take that back. He’s banging me on the reg,” Cosette said contemplatively. “I think he might be onto something.”

Enjolras eyed Cosette, whose beauty was exceeded only by her poise. He turned his gaze to Marius, who, while being tremendously attractive, had a very subtle charm that rarely presented itself and thus did not seem to match entirely with Cosette’s. Marius had ketchup on his chin and had turned in an assignment on time once last semester for the first time in six years; Cosette did not have a hair out of place or a lipstick smudge anywhere to be seen and almost exclusively took eight week courses because if they were any longer, she got bored. Marius had the kind of dual intelligence that meant he got into law school just by breathing, but also routinely insisted he didn't need glasses even though he'd been declared legally blind by four optometrists. Conversely, Cosette wore white shirts and drank coffee fearlessly regardless. Enjolras had never seen her sweat, even in the heat of summer. She filed her taxes on time and actually took a daily multivitamin. In short, Cosette had all of the adult qualities that Marius did not. Logically, there was no good reason for them to have such a cohesive relationship. Despite all odds, though, they were indeed banging on the reg.

“Okay,” Enjolras said. “I’m convinced. Start talking.”

Marius beamed.

-o-

“Just--what the _fuck_ was that,” Grantaire exclaimed.

Eponine had chased Grantaire halfway back to their apartment, and they’d walked the rest of the way illuminated by the glow of the city lights. Grantaire had been silent, near catatonic for the entire journey; Eponine coaxed only a few words out of him for the purpose of ascertaining if he was in relative good health and then left him alone. No sooner had she shut the apartment door behind them did he unleash a torrent of curses so sincere that even a particularly vengeful witch would have flinched back from him. Eponine followed him into his studio, where he continued to soliloquize softly to himself. She’d left him for five minutes to make herself a cup of coffee, and returned to find him furiously kneading a pile of clay. She took a seat on the floor in the corner and sipped her coffee, watching him add to his block with single-minded intensity.

“Well,” she said finally. “He _is_ really hot.”

Grantaire paused with his hands digging thumbprints into the side of his clay and barely muffled a shriek. “Really hot? No, you’re totally misunderstanding the situation. Enjolras is not just hot. Enjolras is fucking beautiful, okay. He’s outstanding, he’s--”

“Let’s keep the adjectives to a minimum,” Eponine interrupted. Grantaire’s expression turned surlier. She narrowly resisted the urge to take the clay block out from beneath his hands, lest he crush it.

“Fine,” Grantaire replied. “Let’s just _assume_ that you understand it. That’s fine. We’ll just _say_ that you do.”

“I _do_ ,” Eponine interrupted again. “I have _eyes_ , Grantaire, I _saw_.”

“You saw, but did you comprehend?”

“Okay, now you just sound like Enjolras talking about whatever the fuck pretentious shit is in your curriculum.”

“Listen,” Grantaire said. “I’m doing my best here.”

“I...Yes,” Eponine said begrudgingly. “When I saw his cheekbones, I thought I heard _Turn Me On_ by Norah Jones play faintly.”

Grantaire fairly crowed with delight. “See! _See!_ ”

“He’s...yes, I see your problem.”

Grantaire sighed wistfully and propped his chin up on his hand. “If I ever got even the slightest hint--and I do mean the _vaguest_ indication that he liked me--no, not even the indication that he liked me, I’d be fine if he hated me, just as long as he wanted to fuck--”

“Grantaire,” Eponine said. “Do your project.”

Grantaire grumbled but he put his hands back in the clay pile next to the block and began pulling pieces off of it again. “Anyway,” he said. “I cannot believe this is my lot in life. I want to die. Or maybe I want to suck his dick. Or maybe I want to die _while_ sucking his dick. Or--”

“Grantaire,” Eponine said.

“Eponine, can I just be real for a second.”

“...Maybe?”

“I want to, as they say, ride it till the wheels fall off.”

“Nobody says that,” Eponine replied, horrified. “Who says that?”

“I want to--”

“Gran _taire_.”

He sighed again and went back to smoothing the pieces onto the block in silence. After another minute without conversation, Eponine got up to fetch a blanket and a pillow from her bedroom. She returned and curled up on a dropcloth beneath the blanket with her phone. Grantaire chanced a peripheral glance at her. She gave him a glare that was distinctly feline and burrowed deeper into her comforter.

“Eponine--”

“If this is another thing about how you want to stick your tongue in your instructor’s ass--”

“I have other thoughts besides wanting to do things to Enjolras’s ass that make his eyes water,” Grantaire said. Eponine grimaced.

“Name one.”

Grantaire opened his mouth and closed it again. Eponine’s laughter pealed out of her chest with no warning.

“Are you serious? You can’t think of an original thought besides _that_?”

“You caught me off guard! I, um--highlighter is just eyeshadow for your cheeks,” Grantaire stuttered. Eponine blinked. Grantaire made a panicked face when he realized the situation he’d put himself in but stuck to his guns. “Think about it. You can’t deny it. Wake up, s--”

“If you’re going to say sheeple, I’m leaving,”

“Wake up, sheeple,” Grantaire repeated doggedly. “Open your eyes to the follies of consumerism.”

“Grantaire,” Eponine said, her lip curling, presumably with disgust at Grantaire’s latent prurience disguised by anti-capitalist sentiments. “Do your fucking homework, you absolute child.”

“Fuck off, Ep.”

“Okay,” she said, grabbing the corners of her blanket and rising as if to leave.

“I was kidding! God, please don’t leave me alone!”

Eponine smirked and sank back down. “That’s what I thought.”

“Anyway,” Grantaire said. “Can we discuss your totally unresolved and highly suspicious interactions with Marius and Cosette tonight?”

“No,” Eponine said.

“Come on,” Grantaire frowned. “I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one night, don’t you think?”

“No,” Eponine said again. “You totally haven’t. Please continue to do so.”

“Eponine,” Grantaire said.

Eponine made a face and crossed her arms under the blanket. “It’s complicated,” she said at last.

“Mmkay,” Grantaire said. “It doesn’t seem complicated.”

“How--what--how would it _not_ be complicated?”

“You just gotta,” Grantaire paused and made some vaguely crude hand gestures. “You know. Just do it.”

“You sound like a Nike spokesperson,” Eponine said. “Polyamory is way more complicated than ‘just doing it’,”

“Polyamory implies romance,” Grantaire said. He rolled some clay between his fingers. “Are you talking about romance?”

“No,” Eponine said waspishly. She sighed and turned her back to him. The ridges of her shoulders beneath her comforter were tensed. “I don’t know. I mean--okay, I mean, I’m never going to date Marius.”

“Right,” Grantaire said, as if that were obvious. “Because you like him too much.”

“I don’t like him,” Eponine said. “He’s annoying.”

“You like him, though.”

“...Yeah,” Eponine said. “I guess I do. That’s what pisses me off, because, because--what the fuck, you know, I feel like I’m a little bit above liking a dude who did a formal analysis paper in Art History on memes, and he’s in a relationship--”

“Hold up,” Grantaire said. “Memes were an option for the formal analysis paper?”

Eponine rolled back over and gave him a scornful look. Grantaire winced and motioned for her to continue.

“I don’t know,” Eponine said. “I’m not going to spend my golden years pining over some dude who has a _girlfriend_.”

“Yeah, but, like,” Grantaire paused and thought of Marius, really thought about him, not just as the sum of his numerous contradictory traits, but as a whole. “Isn’t Pontmercy a born and bred romantic? Isn't there a possibility that he’s out there whining to Cosette about how hot you are to the tune of an Etta James song?”

“What? No.”

-o-

_Earlier That Night:_

FROM: [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

TO: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu) , fauchelevent@g.ens.edu

SUBJECT: I Am Emotional

hi all

have attached my ideas to ask eponine if she wants to go out with and/or have sex with me and sette. please advise on practicality of issues; i am sad and think she is pretty.

thanks

i have a spotify playlist that you should listen to while you read the attachment!! my spotify user is memerius and click on the “love don’t come easy” playlist

* * *

 

FROM: [fauchelevent@g.ens.edu](mailto:fauchelevent@g.ens.edu)

TO: [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontememecy@gmail.com) , [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu)

SUBJECT: excessive ella fitzgerald/etta james

hello

thanks for soliciting my opinion on this but we live together so i’ve already spoken to you about this twice in the past three (3) days. enjolras, feel free to weigh in.

RE: your playlist--pare down the etta james and ella fitzgerald tracks? we get it, you’re sad. there didn’t need to be three different versions of _black coffee_

* * *

 

FROM: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu)

TO: [fauchelevent@g.ens.edu](mailto:fauchelevent@g.ens.edu) , [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

SUBJECT: phil collins?

was it necessary to use my school email for this? we can meet sometime this week to discuss if totally necessary, or we can text

i use this email for my students so you can understand my reticence.

RE: playlist--shocked and surprised to see that you can’t hurry love only featured on the playlist with the supremes version and not with phil’s version. both are masterful in their own ways. would have liked to see a little variety with that.

marius, do not forget that we have an exam in two weeks

cosette, do not forget to turn in yr paper to myriel

thanks

enjolras

* * *

 

FROM: [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

TO: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu) , fauchelevent@g.ens.edu

SUBJECT: What The Fuck, You Guys

hi all

no comments on my Plan, only attacks on my dj skills. i guess i will _not_ bE purchasing 300 bouquets of eponine’s favorite flower. does anyoNe have grantaire’s contact Info so i can ask him about the things that She likes?

NOT sincerely, (you hurt my feelings)

marius

* * *

 

FROM: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu)

TO: [fauchelevent@g.ens.edu](mailto:fauchelevent@g.ens.edu) , [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

SUBJECT: enough

marius

yes i noticed that you capitalized the letters to spell out P-E-N-I-S in your email

not sure what your intention is there

NOT giving you grantaire’s contact info. aren’t you guys friends? why don’t you have it

please stop emailing me

thanks

enjolras

* * *

 

FROM: [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

TO: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu) , fauchelevent@g.ens.edu

SUBJECT: What The Fuck, You Guys 2: The What The Fuckening

I _DID_ HAVE IT ONCE THANKS FOR ASKING BUT I LOST ALL MY CONTACTS THE SECOND TIME I DROPPED MY PHONE IN THE SHOWER STOP BULLYING ME THIS IS HOMOPHOBIA

* * *

 

FROM: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu)

TO: [fauchelevent@g.ens.edu](mailto:fauchelevent@g.ens.edu) , [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

SUBJECT: ??

HOW IS IT HOMOPHOBIA I’M GAY TOO

enjolras

* * *

 

FROM: [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

TO: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu) , fauchelevent@g.ens.edu

SUBJECT: What The Fuck, You Guys 3: The How The Fuckening

I AM BISEXUAL AND YOU ARE INCONVENIENCING ME THAT’S HOW, NOW CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME GRANTAIRE’S PHONE NUMBER!!!

* * *

 

FROM: [enjolras@g.ens.edu](mailto:enjolras@g.ens.edu)

TO: [fauchelevent@g.ens.edu](mailto:fauchelevent@g.ens.edu) , [memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com](mailto:memeriuspontmemecy@gmail.com)

SUBJECT: i give up

here

+33 1 40 20 50 50

enjolras

* * *

 

-o-

“Call this intuition,” Grantaire said. “I really think there’s an extremely high chance that Marius is out there being a baby about you to his friends.”

“Seems fake,” Eponine said.

Grantaire made a condescendingly understanding face at Eponine and mimed patting her back supportively. “Is this, like, y’know, you accepting the love you think you deserve?”

“Settle down, Chbosky,” Eponine said, looking extremely unimpressed. “No. I just don’t think Marius--or Cosette, for that matter--likes me that way.”

“Is it possible that you’re totally blind to any positive romantic attention they might be attempting to display towards you because you are the way that you are?”

“I am the way that I--wait, what do you mean?”

“You do a thing,” Grantaire said apologetically. “Where you ignore all the signs of interest that people project at you,”

“I,” Eponine said, drawing herself up as threateningly as someone wrapped in a dandelion patterned comforter could do, “Do _no such thing_. And you’re one to talk.”

“How am I one to talk?”

“Enjolras,” Eponine said, with an air of finality.

“He doesn’t like me,” Grantaire said dismissively. “I mean, he likes me a little more than his other students, sure, but--”

“Okay,” Eponine said. “Pot? Meet kettle.”

“That’s fair,” Grantaire agreed mildly.

Eponine buried her face in her pillow and made a pained noise akin to a condor’s mating cry. “I’m better than this. Don’t you think I’m better than this?”

“I think you’re better than _everything_ ,” Grantaire said. “No one besides maybe Dev Patel deserves your sexual or romantic presence.”

“Naturally,” Eponine agreed.

“And if we’re both still single at forty, we’ll totally get married and emotionally dedicate ourselves to each other but have no strings attached sex with other people.”

“Totally,” she said.

“But,” Grantaire said.

“But?”

“The heart wants what it wants,” Grantaire said.

Eponine sighed again. “If I had something next to me other than my phone, I would throw it at you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Grantaire said. “And that would be fair. I just mean--you know, liking people who you maybe shouldn’t doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you a human being.”

“Right,” Eponine said. “I was specifically asking for advice about how to kill my feelings and turn into a shell of a human being, though.”

“Oh,” Grantaire said thoughtfully. “I have way too many feelings, as evidenced by me making a foot tall sculpture for an instructor that I have a crush on. Have you tried asking Montparnasse about the shell of a human being thing?”

“Good call,” Eponine said. “Thanks for trying.”

“Yeah,” Grantaire said. “I guess that’s just gonna be a thing that remains unresolved.”

“Unfortunately,” Eponine said. “It’s okay. I’ll buy some absinthe and get totally trashed and throw up my moral compass and soft feelings in the shower, and I’ll be fine again.”

“That’s _my_ signature move,” Grantaire pouted. “Get your own.”

“It works so well, though,”

“Damn, you right,” Grantaire said. “Have at it. I’ll hold your hair back.”

“I love you,” Eponine said longsufferingly.

“Feeling is mutual,” Grantaire said.

“Okay, do your thing. Sorry for distracting you. I’m gonna text Montparnasse.” Eponine said.

“Mmhmm,” Grantaire replied vaguely, already back to sculpting. He was easily distracted at first, but once he settled into the thick of artistic creation, he was impossible to interact with. Eponine usually gave up about thirty minutes in, when he reached a hazy state in which only he and the subject of his art existed. He knew he’d reached that state when he glanced down to find Eponine fast asleep in the corner, her comforter drawn up past her chin, her mascara starting to smear down the very top of her right cheek. He rolled his shoulders and picked up the clay again and thought of nothing else for hours. He didn’t notice the black of night shifting to the chilly white of dawn to the tentative golden sunshine of a late spring morning. Only the block in his hands had his attention.

-o-

Eponine blinked awake at around ten AM. Grantaire was just finishing up the shaping the last part of his project. She blinked once, twice, three times, and yelped.

“What time is it?!”

“What?” Grantaire answered absently, his fingers flying. He was using the set of Kemper ribbon tools Eponine had bought him on a whim, which warmed her heart a disproportionate amount considering the fact that he let her sleep on a concrete floor for close to nine hours with no concern for the well-being of her joints. She tipped her head to one side and cracked out the stiffness in her neck. Better.

“What time is it?” she repeated. He made no move to check or to answer. She groaned and pawed at her phone. “Fuck, dude, did you sleep?”

“Sleep?” Grantaire asked. His grin bordered on too manic for Eponine’s liking. “Morpheus cannot steal me from my work.”

“Jesus, Grantaire,” Eponine grumbled. She rose unsteadily to her feet, stretching her arms above her head. Her cup of coffee, cold from sitting out all night, wobbled and threatened to spill. She considered it for a moment and then scooped it up and swallowed it down in two short gulps. Grantaire made a face at this but wisely withheld his comments.

“Did Montparnasse text back?” Grantaire asked.

Eponine swiped at her phone and read aloud.

“ _Smoke some weed and rise above it_ ,” she quoted. “ _Also, like, listen to your heart._ ”

“Sounds about right,” Grantaire said.

“Yeah,” Eponine said miserably. “You hungry? Oh, fuck it, I know you’re hungry. I’ll be back.”

“Yeah, okay,” Grantaire agreed, obviously not paying attention. He positioned the head of his figure on the block and fussed with the curve of the shoulders. Eponine moseyed out of the studio with her comforter draped over her shoulders, looking like an extremely weary queen forced to attend a routine execution of a disloyal but otherwise well-liked subject.

She returned half an hour later with crepes, a bowl of assorted berries, and two cups of fresh coffee. Grantaire made no move to ingest anything or to inquire where the food came from, and instead picked up a tiny knife and started incising the lower half of the block. Eponine set the plate down on the edge of the table and stood behind Grantaire to behold his work. She choked on her coffee and had to fight to swallow it.

“That’s--oh my God, Grantaire, are you going to get dropped from the class for giving your teacher...this?”

“He wouldn’t _dare_ drop me,” Grantaire said, his voice brimming with portentous bravado. “This is _art_.”

“It crosses the border from art into something else if you can’t display it openly in a municipally funded building,” Eponine said pleasantly. Grantaire’s brow furrowed.

“Fuck off,” he said finally. He pulled a piece of clay out of a bag and started shaping it carefully. Eponine, after realizing what he was making, groaned and inched backwards.

She took her plate of pancakes and retired to the corner with it, and that was how they spent their Saturday.

-o-

May dawned with crisp clean weather and nary a late spring shower. The extra credit project had been lurking in Grantaire’s closet for a month and was now ready to be released like Aphrodite springing from the foam aloft on a seashell. Grantaire took his AH-I final and found that it was second nature to recognize Giotto di Bondone’s work. When he was the first in the lecture hall to deliver his paper and Scantron to the front of the room, Enjolras made a surprised face.

Grantaire, unperturbed, leaned close across the desk and said, “Can I see you in office hours? I’d like to turn in my extra credit project.”

Enjolras didn’t really blink in surprise. It looked more like an involuntary eye spasm. He cleared his throat and said, his voice uneven, “That’ll be fine. I'll see you at two?”

Grantaire leaned closer, and with his eyes on Enjolras's mouth, said, “Count on it.”

He turned and left the room. Enjolras had to grip the edge of his desk and sit down very slowly so he wouldn't fall.

-o-

Grantaire had a flair for the dramatic. Everyone knew that. Montparnasse should not have been surprised.

“Okay, so _why_ do you want me to break into your professor’s office?”

“Student instructor,” Grantaire hissed. “If you call him--”

“Yeah, yeah, it gives him more power. Sorry. I forgot. Anyway, why are you assuming I know how to pick a lock? Is this because I’m black? That’s unfair stereotyping.”

There was a crushing silence on the other end of the phone. Grantaire finally spoke up. “Montparnasse, _I’m_ black.”

“Then why don’t you know how to pick the lock your damn self?”

“Can you just get your ass over here,” Grantaire groaned. “Please.”

“Give me a good reason.”

“If you don’t, I’m not going to return any of the weed I stole from your sock drawer for the purpose of this conversation.”

“Touche. I’ll be there in ten. Text me the address again?”

Montparnasse didn’t have to see Grantaire to know that he was smirking. The call ended, and his phone buzzed with the address.

When he rolled up to the building that housed the faculty offices, Grantaire was hovering outside, straining under the weight of an enormous box. Montparnasse dashed up to the door, already bracing himself for whatever ridiculous thing Grantaire was going to demand.

“Let’s move,” Grantaire said, with no preamble. “Get the door.”

Montparnasse grabbed the door handle, knowing better than to question him, and followed him inside. He’d never been inside the faculty building before, and he was surprised to see how fancy it was. It was fashionably austere, with glass walls everywhere and all the door handles glimmering chrome. Grantaire had to swipe his student ID to get inside, and he forced Montparnasse to hold the huge box.

There was a receptionist sitting at the desk, marking up forms and looking bored.

Grantaire leaned over and put his mouth very close to Montparnasse’s ear. “I’ll distract her. Room 204. Go.”

Montparnasse sighed. “This is a faculty office at a university, not a bank. We don’t have to break in. I’m just gonna ask her if I can go up to Enjolras’s office.”

“Room 204,” Grantaire repeated.

Montparnasse suppressed another sigh and started walking, his biceps screaming at the weight of the box.

“Excuse me!”

That was the receptionist, of course. Montparnasse, still walking, turned his head very slightly and said authoritatively, “I’m just running up to see Valjean. Delivering some research findings for my project.”

“He--”

“Thanks,” Montparnasse said, cruising by.

Grantaire flashed Montparnasse a delighted, extremely unsubtle thumbs-up. Montparnasse held his tongue and turned into the hall, ignoring the receptionist. He wasn’t sure where he was going, though; Grantaire, the melodramatic fucker that he was, had neglected to tell him which direction to go in, and there didn’t seem to be any helpful signage pointing to Room 204. Montparnasse had only one thing to go on, and that was that Enjolras was a professor of the humanities. Oops. Student instructor of the humanities. Valjean’s office, which was visible from his vantage point in the hall, belonged to a professor of science. Going off of that, it seemed highly unlikely that Enjolras’s office would be on this side of the building.

He did a volte-face and set off in the opposite direction. Door numbers ticked by. 119, 140, 178. Montparnasse didn’t recognize any of the names, and none of them were kind enough to put what subjects they taught on the door, which wasn’t very helpful. 200, 201, 202, 203--God, his neck ached from turning to check the numbers on all the doors. The box was so fucking heavy, he couldn’t be--fuck, fuck, _wait._ He’d gone too far. 208, 207, 206, 205-- _there_ was Enjolras’s office. Feeling very smug, Montparnasse put the box down with a thump and examined the lock.

It was relatively simple. He wasn’t surprised at that. Universities usually didn’t have the money for fancy locks on student instructor’s doors. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and rooted through for his library card. The stiff plastic would probably serve well enough to turn the lock. He reached out and jiggled the handle. The door swung open wide with no coaxing whatsoever. Montparnasse snorted and edged through it, dragging the box behind him. Of fucking course it’d already be open. It was an SI’s office, not the Oval Office. He put his library card back in his wallet and shoved it into his pocket. He was about to turn and leave when he noticed a neon pink Post-It on top of the box.

In Grantaire’s neat handwriting, it read, _take it out_.

That cryptic bastard. Take _what_ out? What the fuck did that _mean_?

After a moment of annoyed consideration, Montparnasse realized he probably meant the box. He bent down and tore off the tape on the cardboard. He peeled back the sides and blinked. Inside was a large object draped in purple velvet. There was a cord on it with a golden tassel at the end. There was also a folder containing a laminated 2.5 page paper on whatever the object was. This was fucking ridiculous.

He got his hands under the edge of the--whatever it was, he had no fucking clue, actually. He imagined it was the one hundred dollars worth of clay he’d shelled out for, obviously, but he wasn’t sure what the finished product was. He was also sure that Grantaire would kill him if he pulled the velvet off to peek. Carefully, he hefted the shrouded thing in his arms and heaved it onto the desk. He smacked the folder down next to it for good measure. He turned back to the box and considered it. It was easily collapsible, thank God, so he folded it up, tucked it under his arms, and went out of the door again. He shut it behind him and started down the hallway.

A consultation of his watch told him that it was nearly two o’clock, meaning that Enjolras was nearly there. He could hear voices in the distance, but he kept walking, ignoring the cardboard of the box digging into his side.

“I think you’re really going to like it,” one of the voices said, mirth barely concealed.

Oh, shit. That was Grantaire’s voice, Montparnasse would know it anywhere, so that must mean--

“I’m sure it’ll be adequate,” said the other voice. Said _Enjolras_.

Montparnasse muffled a yelp by biting down on the edge of his hand and walked faster. He thought they might’ve been going in different directions, because Grantaire’s voice got fainter and then lapsed entirely, but of course he wouldn’t be that lucky.

He came careening around the corner at full fast-walk speed and smashed straight into the combined bulk of Grantaire _and_ Enjolras. They all three went sprawling, Enjolras’s glasses flying off, Montparnasse’s box skidding to the other end of the hall, Grantaire making a heavy thump as he crashed against the shiny bamboo floors.

“Oh my God,” Montparnasse said, hastily scrambling to his feet. “Fuck, I am so sorry, I’m--yeah, I’m just gonna--here’s your glasses, man,”

He held Enjolras’s frames out to him. They were tortoiseshell patterned and obviously Warby Parker knock-offs. Montparnasse thought he was lucky the cheap things hadn’t broken. He looked up, caught the full force of Enjolras’s brown eyes, and felt his chest constrict. Enjolras had a very showy kind of handsomeness about him. He looked like a millionaire’s home that was too obvious in its profligacy but was still embarrassingly beautiful. He was, at a closer look, a little older than Grantaire, maybe close to thirty, with the beginnings of crow’s feet lending his already very finely crafted face a hint of gravitas. Montparnasse felt sweat bead up on his temples.

“Hello, excuse me,” Grantaire said pointedly, obviously recognizing the stricken look in Montparnasse’s gaze. “Can you please give this man his glasses back?”

Montparnasse slapped the glasses into Enjolras’s palm and leapt up. “Sorry. I’m so--oh, Jesus. Grantaire, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“You know this guy?” Enjolras asked curiously.

Montparnasse had a feeling that Grantaire’s entire face would’ve been flushed pink had his complexion allowed it.

“What? I mean. Yes? I think?”

“You think?” Enjolras and Montparnasse said in unison.

“Wha--I mean--okay. I know him. I’ve seen him before, yes. Now is _not the time_ ,” Grantaire said, the last part directed at Montparnasse with a thinly veiled growl.

“Grantaire,” Montparnasse said.

“Montparnasse,” Grantaire said tightly. He didn’t say _if you mess this up for me, I will shove a paintbrush so deep in your ass that it comes out of your throat_. He didn’t _have_ to say it.

“Right,” Montparnasse said. “Sorry about your glasses, man.”

“It’s fine,” Enjolras said peaceably, obviously mistaking the wobble in Montparnasse’s voice for extreme anxiety. “Really, it’s okay. It’s a sharp corner, so it could’ve--”

Montparnasse grabbed his box, and, mumbling another apology, charged down the hall and turned another corner at random, vanishing from sight as fast as possible.

“What a weird guy,” Enjolras said absently, absorbed in polishing his glasses. “Where do you know him from?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire said, avoiding the question. “Real weird.”

In the lobby, Montparnasse pulled out his phone to text Eponine.

 **memepornasse:** 911 enjolras is HOT

 **gayponine:** RIGHT.

 **memepornasse:** I Am A Homosexual

 **gayponine:** you better not still be at the faculty building waiting for E and R to come down so you can creep on them

 **gayponine:** you creep.

            Montparnasse pocketed his phone and left the building.

-o-

            Enjolras pushed his door open and motioned for Grantaire to step in. He paused at the sight of the velvet draped, unidentified object on his desk.

            “What the fuck,” Enjolras said plainly. He’d never swore in front of Grantaire before. Grantaire was counting it as progress in their relatively nonexistent relationship.

            “Please have a seat,” Grantaire said.

            “This is my office,” Enjolras said, bemused.

            “Have a seat,” Grantaire repeated.

            Enjolras took a seat.

            Grantaire squared his shoulders and gestured to the cord. “Would you like to do the honors?”

            “Um,” Enjolras said. “Sure?” He reached out and tugged on the tassel. The velvet dropped, revealing-- “Is that a penis,” Enjolras said flatly.

            Grantaire opened his folder and started to read. “ _Herma,_ also known as herms, often  served as signposts in ancient Greece. They are called herms due to their association with the trickster god Hermes, who represents fertility--hence the phallus--, luck, borders, and r--”

            “Grantaire,” Enjolras said. “Did you sculpt me a penis statue,”

            “Well, it’s a little more sophisticated than a ‘penis statue’, Doc. It’s art,” Grantaire said primly. “I’m trying to explain rig--”

            “I know what a herm is,” Enjolras said. “I’m an art history teacher.”

            “Student instructor,” Grantaire said mildly.

            “Actually, I’m what's standing between you and an A right now, Grantaire, so watch your tone,” Enjolras said, his eyes burning.

            Grantaire shrugged. “Anyway,”

            “This is,” Enjolras said, speechless again once he looked at the sculpture

            The herm was nearly a foot high. The top of it had a man's head positioned on it, an almost imperceptible smirk on his face. The man’s neck tapered into carefully sculpted shoulders. Below that, it widened into a long grey obelisk. At the very base of the sculpture, in hyper-realistic detail, there was a penis. It was made in perfect scale to the sculpture and had, to Enjolras's immense disbelief, tiny pubic hairs made of clay surrounding it. Frankly, it was obscene. It evoked a very strong sense of shock, and beneath that, mild horror, and further beneath that, intense amusement. It was art.

            “The Greeks used to stroke the dicks on ‘em for good luck,” Grantaire said lewdly.

            Enjolras had to fight not to choke.

            “Is that so,” Enjolras said, barely breathing.

            “Yep,” Grantaire said cheerfully.

            “Can I ask a question,” Enjolras said.

            “Please do,” Grantaire said politely. “Audience participation is encouraged.”

            “Do you have a crush on me?” Enjolras asked.

            “No,” Grantaire said stubbornly, folding his arms. “You have bad taste in paintings and you aren't a good teacher and you don't need to assign _two_ formal analysis papers for a class nobody gives half a shit about.”

            “ _You_ give half a shit about it,” Enjolras challenged, his jaw clenched.

            “Yeah, because I'm a great student, and I'm, like, Picasso,” Grantaire said.

            “You have an 89.9%. You're not that great of a student.”

            “I hope you break both your legs, get a full body cast, and then get into a fender bender on the way home that doesn't kill you, but severely jostles your cast.”

            “I hope a lightning bolt from heaven shatters your penis statue into shards.”

            Grantaire, his eyes full of righteous fury, stomped around Enjolras's desk. Enjolras rose to his feet and scowled back.

            “It’s. Not. A. Penis. Statue.”

            “It’s a statue with a penis,” Enjolras said, eyeing the penis statue. “What do you want me to call it?”

            “Call it what it is,” Grantaire said. “Call it art.”

            “I’m not calling it art.”

            “Then I'm not going on a date with you.”

            “You said you didn't have a crush on me!”

            “I don't! But if I did, I wouldn’t go on a date with you because you're disparaging my _art._ ”

            “Penis statue.”

            “Art is subjective, you disgraceful Bob Ross wannabe,” Grantaire said.

            “So if I say I like your penis statue, you'll go out with me?”

            Grantaire huffed. “If you say you like my art, I’ll consider not telling the dean that you're a pompous, prevaricatory muppet in a wig with the teaching skills of a wet rag who watched one History Channel about how aliens were responsible for the Sistine Chapel and decided he could teach people.”

            “At least I don't dress like an art student from the 1960s who lives in London and only smokes clove cigarettes while trying to use respectability politics to counter every argument,” Enjolras snapped, invading Grantaire's personal space.

            “Like you have room to talk, you fucker. Your blazer makes you look like a reject from a Target men's catalogue printed only for heterosexuals.”

            “Take that back,” Enjolras gasped. “Nothing about me is designed for heterosexual consumption.”

            “No, and fuck you.”

            They took a moment to glare at each other, both of them with their arms firmly crossed, their chests pressing together, Grantaire breathing heavily like he'd just run a marathon, Enjolras sweating like a sinner in church on redemption day.

            “I like your art,” Enjolras said finally. “I really like your art. I think you have a lot of talent, and even if you don't want to go out with me--you probably don't, I know, and I guess this blazer _isn't_ the best, but I’m trying to be honest here--”

            Grantaire, barely able to withhold his laughter, said, “You’re not as smart as you look.”

            Enjolras bristled. He'd really thought they were gonna get somewhere. “What do you mean?”

            “It took a clay dick sculpture to get you to notice that I want to go out with you? I mean, _really_ , Enjolras, what am I going to have to do to get you to notice that I want to suck your--”

“I thought you didn't like me,”

“Well, I--”

“I thought it was more sophisticated than a penis sculpture,” Enjolras interrupted.

Grantaire wheezed.

“Well, I can't go out with you,” Enjolras said. Grantaire's face fell. “I can't, because you're technically still my student. But--” He paused and looked down at his watch. “As of May fourteenth, Sunday, at 12:00 AM, however, the semester ends, meaning that--”

“You fucker,” Grantaire said, a heartbreakingly brilliant smile blooming on his face. “You fatuous, vituperative mother _fucker_. You fucking coquette, oh my _God_ ,” Grantaire continued, his smile growing increasingly wider even as his spiel continued.

“Wow,” Enjolras said. “Enough with the dirty talk, okay? Shut up and kiss me.”

Grantaire immediately complied, leaning closer, his breath warm against Enjolras's mouth, his hands reaching out to graze Enjolras's hips--

“Sorry,” he said, drawing back. “Better not. I am your student, after all, professor.”

“You are _not_ going to make me wait all weekend to kiss you,” Enjolras said, horrified. “Please don't do that, holy shit.”

Grantaire danced back out of Enjolras's reach, edging towards the door, grinning. “It’s _so_ inappropriate, professor, I just _couldn't_ \--”

“I’m a student instructor!” Enjolras wailed. “The rules are different! It doesn't matter as long as it doesn't give you an unfair advantage!”

Unsubtly, Grantaire looked at Enjolras's mouth, and then down to his crotch, and then back up to his mouth. He licked his lips and said, “On the contrary, _professor,_ I think it gives me a very _sizeable_ advantage.”

“I’m not a professor! I’m a student instructor! Come back and kiss me!” Enjolras yelled down the hall at Grantaire's retreating back. When that had no effect, he called, “Get this damn penis statue out of here!”

Grantaire turned and flashed Enjolras an adoring smile right before he turned the corner. Enjolras retreated into his office to reluctantly rub the statue’s dick for luck.

-o-

“Wait, so,” Grantaire said. It was May 15th, Monday afternoon, the beginning of a warm and inviting summer. Grantaire had completed his first Art History credit. He’d also had a few hours of sweaty and fulfilling sex. Currently, he had his head pillowed on the chest of his former instructor. “What did Marius say to you?”

Enjolras kissed Grantaire's temple and said, “Does it matter?”

“I want to send him a fruit basket for it,” Grantaire said.

-o-

**A Month Earlier**

“Skywrite above the quad that you're in love with him,” Marius suggested. He dumped three packets of sugar into his coffee. Enjolras groaned.

“Marius, you're making me regret not only this conversation, but my entire friendship with you.”

“Okay, I guess you can't afford skywriting on a student instructor's salary, but--”

“Wha--Marius, the issue with me skywriting a _declaration_ _of love_ to someone I've known for, like, three months, is not money. It's _weird._ ”

“Dude, _you_ asked for my advice!”

“Yes, but I thought you'd actually have something useful to say! This is your fifteenth inconveniently priced and ridiculously extravagant suggestion in as many minutes! Is this _really_ how you wooed Cosette?”

Marius sighed. “No, it's not.”

“So why are you leading me down the primrose path paved with upsettingly romantic propositions?”

“...Because you're pretentious as hell?

“Marius--”

“No, come on, dude. You _could_ be a lawyer, but you’re teaching art history. You're always asking people if they've ever been to Peru, you took cuneiform as a foreign language-- _cuneiform_ , dude--and I'm pretty sure you've tried to stick your own dick in a bucket of ochre before.”

“ _Marius_ \--”

“I know that _your_ idea of love is this miraculous transformation from, like, total loathing to absolute adoration, but, y’know, if you really wanna date this dude, or fuck him, even, you have to learn to speak his language. I didn't skywrite things to Cosette and I didn't cover her dorm with rose petals. I'd do any of those things if she asked, but that's not what she wants. She's a very beautiful girl. I know that. Anybody can give her rose petals or chocolate or poetry. But I love Cosette, and love is what makes us human, and I know that what humans like best is to be understood. So I do things for Cosette that _she_ likes. I try to speak her love language. She likes hiking and cooking German food and watching Fawlty Towers reruns when she thinks no one is paying attention.”

“Marius, you hate John Cleese,” Enjolras said, horrified at the thought that people still watched anything with him in it in this day and age.

“ _Everyone_ hates John Cleese!” Marius said vehemently. “I fucking hate hiking, and I don't particularly care for spaetzle. But Cosette likes all of those things, so I do those things for her or with her. I own a pair of hiking boots. I cook schnitzel. I pretend to laugh at John Cleese. That's what she likes. It's not what _I_ think she likes. I said that stuff before because you always think you know best. I know _you'd_ like Grantaire to shout Pablo Neruda through a megaphone to you while standing beneath your office window. But from what I'm hearing, it doesn't sound like he likes that kind of thing very much. So you should learn about what he likes and do those things for him instead. And if you can't, then you aren't ready to be with him.”

“Marius, I… I had no idea you… I…”

“Shallow waters have hidden depths,” Marius said, grinning.

“So that's it? That's the one step it takes to make your relationship perfect?”

“Enjolras, no relationship is perfect. Cosette and I are just two people doing our best to--” Marius paused at Enjolras’s expression. “Yeah, okay. It also doesn't hurt that I'm, like, great at giving head.”

“Marius, please,”

“You’ll be fine, man. Just ask him if he has a crush on you. It's that simple.”

“Nothing is ever that simple.”

“If nothing else,” Marius said. “Suck his dick.”

“Marius, as much as I hate to admit it, you might be right.”

Marius beamed, yet again.

-o-

“Ha,” Enjolras said, stroking Grantaire's hair. “Marius didn't say anything, really. He just told me to stop being an idiot.”

“Ah, well,” Grantaire said, sapient. “That _is_ something that someone should always be around to tell you. I'll send the fruit basket tomorrow.”

“Fuck off,” Enjolras said, rolling his eyes.

“Also,” Grantaire said. “You’re really great at giving head.”

Enjolras smiled.

-o-

 

The next semester, and every one after that, to Grantaire's _extreme_ amusement, Enjolras put the herm on his desk before each test and made his students touch the phallus for luck. Who was he to mess with tradition?

 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you had a blast, i have other stuff on here you can check out if the fancy strikes you. i also have a second part of this i'll post in a bit that has actual sex in it. if you enjoyed yourself the best thing you can do is comment, and if you didn't, still comment so i know what i did wrong i guess? as always i am yr most humble and obedient servant at your disposal, @jamesmadiSIN on twitter and irltrash on tumblr. come talk to me/send me writing prompts/let me know if you want the second part of this that is dirty and sappy/whatever. see you next time. <3


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